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Rowan gets 14 months ... and a tongue-lashing

Federal judge scolds Hecker's new wife for stealing and gives her the max

By MaryJo Webster mwebster@pioneerpress.com

Posted:
03/15/2011 12:01:00 AM CDT

Updated:
03/15/2011 10:16:53 PM CDT

Christi Rowan might have served no more than six months in prison for helping bankrupt auto mogul Denny Hecker hide assets, but her "brazenness" — stealing money in the FBI's possession — warranted nothing less than the maximum sentence, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.

U.S. District Judge Joan Ericksen sentenced Hecker's new wife to 14 months in prison.

"It's mindboggling that somebody would take money that was in the custody of the court and the FBI," Ericksen said. "It does kind of take your breath away."

Rowan, 37, declined to make a statement to the court. Wearing a white dress shirt and black skirt, she stood stoically before the judge as the sentence was handed down.

Her 14-year-old daughter, who was in the courtroom with other family members, sobbed audibly.

Ericksen also ordered Rowan to five years' probation after she is released from prison and to pay just over $36,000 in restitution.

Rowan's attorney asked for the minimum sentence of eight months. "She's just made some very bad mistakes in the last couple of years," said Janet Newberg, who represented Rowan at taxpayer expense. "It's our position that she is just the latest of Dennis Hecker's victims."

Hecker, 58, owned a large auto dealership network in Minnesota before he went bankrupt in 2009, owing $767 million. He is serving a 10-year prison sentence for defrauding Chrysler Financial and other lenders, and for hiding assets from the bankruptcy court.

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Rowan had agreed to a maximum sentence of six months when she pleaded guilty to one count of bank fraud and one count of bankruptcy fraud in April. She admitted lying about her employment and income on a loan application to buy a Land Rover at Hecker's request, and to lying under oath in his bankruptcy case.

But last month, Ericksen ordered Rowan be jailed and rejected her plea bargain after prosecutors alleged she had continued to commit crimes. Prosecutors said she spent more than $9,000 from gift cards that a judge had ordered be turned over to authorities.

Both the judge and the prosecutor said they had little confidence Rowan would change her ways once released from prison.

"This case started with lies to a bank and ended with the defendant stealing money from this court," Assistant U.S. Attorney Nancy Brasel said during the hearing. "This is a stark indication that (Rowan) hasn't taken responsibility for her crimes."

Rowan, who was raised in Texas, has a felony conviction a decade old for stealing $14,000 in cash from two vehicle sales at a car dealership where she worked in Arizona. Rowan pleaded guilty and told the court she did it because of financial hardship while trying to raise her daughter alone. She was sentenced to two years' probation and to pay restitution.

Ericksen will recommend Rowan serve her term at a minimum-security federal prison in Greenville, Ill., located about 40 miles east of St. Louis, Mo. But the Federal Bureau of Prisons makes the final decision, and Rowan will remain in the Sherburne County Jail until then.

Rowan was granted a short visit with her daughter and 6-year-old son immediately after the hearing Tuesday. She had not seen them since she was jailed in late February.

Hecker was transferred Tuesday from the Sherburne County Jail — where he has been since mid-October — to the Federal Prison Camp in Duluth, a minimum-security facility, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

A LIGHTNING ROD

Rowan has been at the center of controversy almost since Hecker filed bankruptcy in June 2009. Hecker's lavish gifts to her, including a $60,000 fur coat and a $30,000 guard dog, raised red flags for the bankruptcy trustee, Randy Seaver.

Seaver soon questioned Rowan's purported $5,000-per-month lease to live in Hecker's former home on Northridge Drive in Medina. Seaver claimed the lease was a sham to protect the $1.8 million house from creditors, but couldn't persuade a judge to declare the lease invalid. Rowan stayed in the house until foreclosure and eviction forced her to move out earlier this year.

As his investigation continued, a tipster offered another lead, Seaver told the Pioneer Press in a recent interview.

The tipster said that just before Hecker's bankruptcy filing, Rowan had purchased a 2008 Supercharged Land Rover for $86,026 and that she also had another one she had purchased a few years earlier. The tipster asked, how could she afford two Land Rovers?

Seaver turned up a car loan application on which Rowan claimed she was an attorney making more than $189,000 annually and an altered W-2 statement showing a similar income figure. When Seaver questioned Rowan under oath, she maintained the lie, although Seaver had proof that her only income came from her own photography business.

Prosecutors filed charges in April 2010 and Rowan agreed to a plea bargain.

By then, Hecker had been indicted on a long list of fraud charges and had abandoned efforts to have his debts forgiven. The pair claimed to be too broke to pay Hecker's criminal defense attorneys or even their utility bills at Northridge Drive.

In late August, Seaver filed a lawsuit showing the pair did have money. He accused them of liquidating — and mostly spending — about $154,000 from life insurance policies that should have been turned over to the bankruptcy estate. Seaver produced canceled checks and prepaid credit card statements showing the couple had spent money on country club dues, fancy restaurants, a luxury salon, lawn care services and plane tickets.

Rowan maintains that she didn't know where the money came from and that she had simply cashed checks or paid bills at Hecker's request.

The revelation about the insurance money eventually led to Hecker's jailing in mid-October. A judge ruled that he needed to turn over the remaining $11,000, which was in the form of American Express gift cards.

Since Hecker was in jail, Rowan retrieved the cards from the Northridge Drive house and turned them over to the U.S. attorney's office. But prosecutors say she kept two cards and wrote down the numbers for several others, then called American Express and asked for replacement cards. Prosecutors say she spent more than $9,000 at upscale establishments such as Jon Charles Salon, Nordstrom and Bumbershute.

Prosecutors discovered most of the money was gone when they tried to liquidate the funds a few weeks ago.

Around the same time, Seaver turned up evidence that Rowan had deposited into a bank account $1,200 in checks made out to Hecker. One of the checks was a stock dividend from an account Hecker had not reported that is currently worth about $90,000, Seaver said. Prosecutors also allege that Rowan withdrew more than $9,000 from a U.S. Bank account belonging to Hecker.

As a result of those allegations, Rowan is facing a contempt charge in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for violating a court order that she not spend or hide any bankruptcy estate assets. A hearing is scheduled for this afternoon.

A SURPRISE MARRIAGE

On Feb. 22, the day before Rowan was jailed, she and Hecker got married in a ceremony conducted via telephone. Hecker was in his cell in the Sherburne County Jail and Rowan was at the Lord of Life Lutheran Church in Maple Grove.

The pastor who performed the ceremony, the Rev. Peter Geisendorfer-Lindgren, later said in an e-mail to parishioners that the marriage had been "in the works since last summer" and that he thought "it was the Christian thing to do."

"I did it because I'm his pastor, and that's what pastors do," Geisendorfer-Lindgren said in the e-mail, noting that people in prison are often ostracized and most in need of a pastor's care. "Also, the lawyers advised me that a marriage by phone was valid and the couple would gain no legal advantage because of it."

The Hennepin County Attorney's Office quickly launched an investigation into the legality of the license application and the subsequent marriage certificate Geisendorfer-Lindgren had submitted to the county.

But a few days later, prosecutors announced there wouldn't be any charges and that they would refer the case to local police.

Capt. Keith Terlinden of the Maple Grove Police Department said Monday they are now "evaluating the case" to determine if they have any jurisdiction.